340
WRITINGS OF SAM HOUSTON, 1859
The Constitution and the Union embrace the principles by which I will be governed if elected. They comprehend all the old Jackson National Democracy I ever professed, or officially practised. I am thine truly, Sam Houston. lTexas Republican, June 24, 1859. George Washington Paschal (Novem- ber 23, 1812-February 16, 1878), jurist, lawyer, author, journalist, was born at Skull Shoals, Greene County, Georgia. He was the son of George Paschal and Agnes Brewer. He was educated by private tutors and in the State Academy at Athens, where he earned his way by teaching and keep- ing books. He studied law, and was admitted to the bar in 1832. Soon afterwards he went as aide to General John E. Wool to remove the Cherokees to Indian Territory. While on that expedition he fell in love with and married Sarah, a full-blood Cherokee, daughter of Chief John Ridge. In 1837 he moved to Arkansas and opened a law office, and before he was thirty years old he was selected by the Arkansas Legislature, as chief justice of the Supreme Court of Arkansas, but he resigned the position within a year and returned to Van Buren, Benton County, where he took charge of the Cherokee claims against the United States, and through his influence the amnesty of 1846 was adopted. In 1848 he moved to Galveston, Texas, but within a few months removed to Austin. There he was known as an intense Union man, and there he edited the Southern Intelligencer. He was, however, radically opposed to Know-Nothingism, Free Soilism, Black Republicanism, and the abolition of slavery. The crisis of 1860 found him at the head of the Union party of Texas, supporting Douglas for the presidency. When the Union party went down before the storm of secession he quietly acquiesced in the will of the majority and recognized secession, but he retired to his home and devoted the years of the Civil War to writing. During this time he wrote A Digest of the Laws of Texas (1866), and The Constitution of the United States Defined and Ca1·efully Annotated (1868). These books alone brought him fame. Impoverished by the war and saddened by the loss of friends, he went to New York in 1866 to try· to earn a new fortune. In 1869 he opened a law office with his son, George W. Paschal, Jr., in Washington, D.C. There he became identified with the Republican party, but supported Greeley in 1872. He worked diligently for the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment. During the last years of his life he edited, as reporter 28-91 Texas Reports, and compiled A Digest of Decisions Comprising Decisions of the Supreme Court of Texas and of the United States upon Texas Law (3 vols., 1872- 1875). This is considered a monumental work. During the remainder of his life he lectured in the law school of Georgetown University, and spent his spare time writing many political pamphlets and magazine articles. He died in Washington, and is buried in the Rock Creek Cemetery. He was married three·times. By Sarah, his Indian wife, he had two sons, George W., Jr., and Ridge; his second wife was Marcia Duval, by whom he had two daughters; his third wife was Mrs. Mary Scoville Harper, a woman of considerable literary ability, who assisted him in his later writings. See J. H. Davenport, Histo1-y of the Sup?·eme Com·t of t'he State of Texas
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